The Navy’s decision to exclude CGI Federal, one of seven companies that offered a bid for the service’s next afloat IT network, relied on a methodology for evaluating pricing that did not reflect how it planned to buy the systems, the Government Accountability Office said Monday.

The GAO on Dec. 12 had announced it was sustaining a key aspect of CGI’s protest of the award of the contract for the Consolidated Afloat Network Enterprise System (CANES), but was only now releasing its reasoning.

The GAO said the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) asked bidders to submit pricing for up to 15 units, a figure that did not match how it would make the evaluations. CGI submitted that argument to GAO and said SPAWAR should have amended the solicitation to reflect the proper number.

“We agree with the protester,” the GAO said.

The GAO said that had the correct evaluation criteria been applied to CGI, its pricing would have been below the five other companies selected for the contract.

The Navy in August announced that CANES incumbent Northrop Grumman [NOC], along with four other companies–General Dynamics [GD], BAE Systems, and smaller firms Global Technical Systems and Serco–had won certification to compete for the full-rate production of CANES.

CGI Federal and Finmeccanica‘s DRS Technologies both filed protests. The GAO earlier this month denied DRS.

The Navy has not said whether it will hold a new competition or simply add CGI to the list of companies certified to compete for CANES task orders.

The Navy had, in awarding the full-rate contract, asked the five companies to each produce one CANES system each for a destroyer. The Navy plans to issue task orders to compete CANES in batches.

The Navy plans to install CANES in 180 ships, submarines and shore operation centers. CANES is designed to eliminate multiple legacy information technology systems by effectively merging stand-alone networks for command, control, computers, communications, and intelligence (C4I) systems into a common, interoperable  shipboard computing environment.